Introduction
Typography is an art and technique of writing documents or texts in a way that makes written language legible, readable and appealing while displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, font size, line length, line spacing and adjusting spaces between letters etc. In a most generic way, typography is applied to the style, arrangement, appearances of letters, numbers and symbols created by the process.
Whereas Typography in LaTex is a document preparation system. It allows to beautifully Typeset your paper. It provides modularity with structuring the documents, equation, citations etc. It helps in preparing professional quality paper that appear ready for submission. Editing and formatting LaTeX document is much easier. The snippets can be easily moved and rested in the document allowing greater flexibility with thee document without disturbing the typesetting. Besides this, LaTex has a steep learning curve. It is easier for researchers in computer science or related field as they are familiar with similar markups. But for a novice, it takes just 2 to 10 hours to learn basics and be able to make small edits.
MS word is quite different from LaTeX
MS word is also used for document preparations, but it is quite different from LaTeX. MS Word uses the term WYSIWYG(What you see is what you get.) It’s relatively easy to comprehend as one can visualize the output while writing. It is most widely available generic tool. It take little effort on author’s part to learn basics and it can be mastered easily. However MS Word is not fit for research. It’s a generic writing tool that does not cater to the specific needs of scientific publishing. The quality of Typesetting achieved with word processors falls short in elements specific to research writing such as equations, figures, citations. Sure there are plugins and tools that make it easier to manage these elements, but the overall quality of the document falls short.
This document describes the new font selection features of the LATEX Document Preparation System. It is intended for package writers who want to write font loading packages similar to times or latexsym. This document is only a brief introduction to the new facilities and is intended for package writers who are familiar with TEX fonts and LATEX packages. It is neither a user-guide nor a reference manual for fonts in LATEX 2”.
Overview
Section 1 : describes the commands for selecting fonts in classes and packages.It lists the five LATEX font at- tributes, and lists the commands for selecting fonts. It also describes how to customize the author commands such as and t o suit your document design.
Section 2 : explains the commands for controlling LATEX math fonts. It describes how to specify new math fonts and new math symbols.
Section 3 : explains how to install new fonts into LATEX. It shows how LATEX font attributes are turned into TEX font names, and how to specify your own fonts using font definition files.
Section 4 : discusses text font encoding. It describes how to declare a new encoding and how to define commands, such as Æor ¨, which have different definitions in different encodings, depending on whether ligatures, etc. are available in the encoding
Fonts Effects for Typography in LaTex
Font Families
Font psychology is the deliberate use of particular styles and sizes of characters in content to produce a desired effect in the viewer. A font is a set of printable or displayable text characters in a specific style and size. The type design for a set of fonts is the typeface and variations of this design form the typeface family. fonts can also categories in font style as well. Each property of a font has a psychological effect. That’s why, Fonts effects have been given very much importance in a field of document writings.
Let’s just begin with brief explanation of font families. By default, in standard LATEX classes the serif typeface serif(roman) font family is used. The other font typefaces ’san serif’ and ’typewriter’(monospace) can be used by entering some specific commands.
Serif(roman):
\textrm{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
sans serif:
\textsf{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
Typewriter(monospace):
\texttt{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
Font styles
Font style impart an impact on psychologically, below important ones are explained with the help of an example.
Styles:
medium:
\textmd{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
bold:
\textbf{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
upright:
\textup{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
italic:
\textit{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
slanted:
\textsl{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
small caps:
\textsc{The pizza smells delicious.}
Output:
The pizza smells delicious.
Emphasizing text:
Change color of Text in LaTeX
Before that we need to import color initially. we can import in the following way for Typography in LaTex.
\usepackage{xcolor}
Now we can write code to color font. code:
\begin{itemize} \color{blue} \item First item \item Second item \end{itemize}
The background colour of some text can also be \textcolor{red}{easily} set. For instance,
you can change to orange the background of \colorbox{yellow}{this text} and then continue typing.
Output:
Creating your Own colors
just copy then paste the code to check results
User-defined colors with different color models:
Change size of font in LaTeX
Per default latex use a font size of 10pt (depending of the used document class article, report, book und letter ) . This could be changed to 11pt or 12pt as a option of document class. That does not mean that only these three sizes can be used, it is only the size of the normal size font. Later changes in the document then refer to this settings. By following commands the size can be changed within a document.
Built-in Command for Font Size
Font size can be changed by using the built-in command in the following ways. tiny-command
{\tiny The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
small-command
{\small The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
large-command
{\large The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
Large-command
{\Large The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
LARGE-command
{\LARGE The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
huge-command
{\huge The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
Huge-command
{Huge The music is too loud for my ears.}
Output:
The music is too loud for my ears.
If we want to write a paragraph then above mentioned approached localized approach is not a good approach. We can resize the paragraph in the following way.
\huge Mysticism is the practice of …………various practices and experiences
Output:
Mysticism is the practice of religious ecstasies (religious ex- periences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences
Make listing in a laTeX
Listings in LaTex are generally categories in two ways.
- Bullet Listing
- Number listing
Bullet Listing
Output:
- first line of bullet.
- second line for bullet.
- third line for bullet.
Number Listing
Output:
- this is first line for number listing.
- this is second line for number listing.
- this is third line for number listing.
Sub listing
Output:
To write Comment and Spacing
Comment and Spacing are two different concepts and will be discussed in two different sub sections.
Comment
In LaTeX, % sign is used for commenting the line for example
Inline Commenting
% That’s how we can comment
Multiple lines Commenting
verbatim package provides a comment enviroment. \usepackage{verbatim}
That’s how we initialize verbatim package
\begin{comment} \item this is a multiple line section \item this is a multiple line section \item this is a multiple line section \end{comment}
\item this is a multiple line section \item this is a multiple line section \item this is a multiple line section \end{comment}
Spacing
There are different spacing teechnique for different purposes. Here I’m going to give you brief and concrete LaTeX Spacing Concept.
- ’\\’ Double backspace is used to break sequence and start from new line
- ’\newline’ is used to break sequence and start for new paragraph
- ’\par’ this is used for paragraph indentation
- ’hspace{3cm}’ is used for horizontal space or horizontal indentation.
- ’vspace{3cm}’ is used for vertical spacing or to manage space between lines
There are following formating command is used for a paragraph.
- ’\reggedright’ for Left Justified
- ’\reggedleft’ for Right Justified
- ’\centering’ for center Justified
If we want to use this in a specific environment or on specific paragraph, we can use it in the following way.
\begin{reggedleft}
……..
……..
……..
\end{reggedleft}
If we want to justify paragraph then we have to write \justify before paragraph. Above mentioned, regged and justify commands, require package \usepackage{regged2e}”
It’s time to dive deep now. We are going to move towards more complex scenario. Brace yourself for further LaTeX markup exploration.
Epilogue
Latex seems little hard in start but when someone know every nuance detail about it and start doing documentation, it becomes supper easy for him. AS we have seen the code and result we can conclude that Latex is not conventional type of tool. Superficially, one of the advantages of LaTeX over other more traditional systems (e.g. Word or OpenOffice) is the high typographical quality of the documents that you’ll be able to produce. This is particularly true for documents that are heavy on mathematics, but documents for any other area could also take advantage of these qualities.
One shouldn’t use LaTeX if
- You don’t have time to learn it.
- Your document is already written
- What you care about is the design of the document.
Under the above mentioned domain, if someone doesn’t want to use LaTeX, it’s cool!.
